I remembered Dad's comments on some of my works when I was a kid. I'd be lying in bed, staring at the glittering bits in the ceiling texture, words pouring into my mind like songs from seductive sirens. No way they'd grant me sleep unless I rose to their call. I'd hunch over a table in the basement till two or three in the morning, and as the night flowed on, I'd wrap a towel around my typewriter to act as a silencer. The more tired I became, the more the keys striking the platen sounded like volleys of thunder. I'd stuff a pillow underneath the typewriter to act as a shock absorber, then immerse myself in verse again.

It didn't work. I'd always try, but it never worked. Inevitably, Dad would hear and come lumbering down the stairs, and I'd swim up from the hazy depths and float there on the surface of the muse as Dad drew up alongside, scratching the stubble on his chin. He'd stand there in his sagging underwear, reading over my shoulder in a silence as long as the sea. He didn't have to speak--I knew exactly what his verdict would be.

"Rhythm seems off. Doesn't flow. Good ideas, son, but you won't make money at it. Trust me, I've tried. You'd make a great realtor though--got my name to carry you in town. Better get to bed now, you've got school in the morning."

He could never acknowledge my gift. Even when I won awards in national student contests, he couldn't accept that maybe, just maybe, I might have a chance at reaching my dreams. Every time he'd read my poems, even the winners, he'd find some way to steal the wind from my sails. And as I'd head to my room for the night, after he'd finished his spiel about my wonderful future in real estate, I'd think, yeah, just what I want in life, to wear a baby-crap-yellow jacket to work every day.

Years later--many rejection slips later--when the New Yorker took my first poem, it was published under a pseudonym. I never told him. Then the Atlantic. Then St. Martin's Press bought my collection. I never told him. I had sold. He hadn't.

And now here I was, sitting by his side, holding his blue-veined hand, the oxygen hissing like serpents through pale green tubes at his nose. The air was winter dry, and the chair had this deep slant that forced me to balance on the edge of the seat in order to see Dad's face. The book in my coat felt heavy as a brick, awkward as a cinder block as I mulled over the best way to tell him.

Dad suddenly sat up, realizing who was there. "Michael, it's you. Good. Son, I've been thinking. Want you to do something for me."

"Easy, Dad. Just sit back."

"Hell with the doctors! Listen to me, kid."

I leaned forward, hoping he'd ease back into the pillows. He didn't.

"All my life, the only thing besides Mother and you kids that meant something to me were my poems."

My throat caught, but I got out the words. "I know, Dad. You showed them to me every time I came by the office."

He smiled, then the clouds settled back in. "Only thing I didn't succeed in, getting published." He coughed furiously. "Take my stuff, kid. You're the only one who understands poetry. Keep sending them out for me."

I rubbed his weathered hand, my stomach twisting like a ball of baler twine. "I will."

"They were good, weren't they?"

A hot tear wandered down my cheek, splattered on the pale tile floor. I shifted my coat, tugged the zipper a little higher.

"They were great, Dad."

Dustan Moon--known as "Moon" by his friends--feasted on fantasy as a child when he lived with his grandmother, a Native American. He begged a bedtime story out of her every night, and he usually got his wish--spellbinding tales that fired his imagination. Moon says: "If I had a time machine, those are the days I would go back to. Since I don't have a time machine, I write."

Moon's first professional sale was a science fiction story he wrote at age sixteen. He was a winner of a Scholastic Inc. national writing contest, and the editor of Science World (circulation 500,000/month) bought his story "The Last Ray of Light," publishing it in 1978. From there he has won more than 30 awards in writing, including a contest sponsored by New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts where his winning entry became the conclusion to her novella "Riley Slade's Return."

His most recent success appeared in bookstores and grocery stores across the country this year. The story is "Seventh Heaven" in Pocket Books' anthology Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II. Moon's comment on it? "A Borg love story. What could be sweeter?"

When Moon is not writing or reading, he enjoys song writing, traveling, skiing, sailing, and scuba diving in user-friendly waters. Don't ask about the other type.

He is hard at work completing his first novel Driftweave.